Go As A River is the 2023 debut novel of Shelley Read, a book about family, womanhood, resilience and tragedy. I read it at the beginning of January, while on holiday, and I devoured it in two days flat. The story was one of the most absorbing and moving ones I have ever read (which is why you should read it too!).
Victoria is the only woman on her family’s farm in Iola, a tiny town in rural Colorado, soon to be buried underwater as part of the Blue Mesa reservoir project. She is suffocated by her tiny world, consisting of her father, uncle and brother until a chance meeting with a boy called Wilson Moon changes her life and forces her away from everything she has ever known. The narrative traces the tragedies and decisions that shape Victoria’s life, following her through the years where she is forced to confront heartbreak and bitter struggle, ultimately finding the strength within to build a life for herself. But don’t be misled by the mention of tragedy—Go As A River is, at its core, a story of resilience, strength and solidarity. Though you may be moved to tears once or twice while reading, if you’re like me, what you will take away from the book is an enduring sense of hope.
Although it is fiction, the story is grounded in the real history of America and the experiences of its people in the turbulent mid-century period. Starting in 1948, Victoria’s life has long been overshadowed by the death of her family—her mother, her aunt and her beloved cousin—when she was just twelve years old. Likewise, the spectre of the Second World War haunts the men in her family, her uncle in particular forever changed by his time in the war. As time passes and the decades turn from the forties to the sixties, these shadows are only darkened by the onset of the Vietnam War, pulling the characters into destinies unforeseen.
A major theme in the book is that of womanhood, duty and friendship. Victoria’s role in her family is simply that of a woman. Victoria herself acknowledges that from the day her mother died, she filled in her role of doing the laundry and cooking dinner for the men around her, while they noticed no difference. They do not go unfed or untaken care of while Victoria does it in place of her mother. Victoria’s loneliness and lack of guidance as the only woman within her family make her later discovery of female friendship and solidarity feel all the more powerful. It is the women in her life who are her saving grace, reaching out a hand to help her not only survive but create a life of her own. Whilst at the heart of the book is a love story; its lifeblood is the connection between women. In my opinion, this becomes the most powerful part of the whole book, perhaps even more so than the central love story.
What I really enjoyed about the book was its message about strength and courage. When I first read the blurb about Victoria’s choices that drive her away from what she knows, I expected her to move to perhaps the other end of the country, or to a new country altogether. Yet her choices, while less drastic, take no less strength or courage. It demonstrates that sometimes returning home takes more strength than running away and that carrying on your family’s legacy does not mean getting stuck in the past. The story also shows the strength required to carry your grief, to let it shape you but not overwhelm you. Victoria creates a new life that represents all she has experienced, including the tragedies she has faced and the people she loved.
The setting of Go As A River feels particularly significant in 2025. The small town of Iola, coupled with the wild Colorado landscape: rivers, mountains, and dense forests, unfurls around you, as suffocating as it is breathing with life. The Colorado nature sustains Victoria in her time of struggle while simultaneously and slowly defeating her with its ferocity. Victoria’s hometown, with her family’s farm, initially feels harmlessly old-fashioned, even quaint, yet hatred bubbles up from the cracks in its respectable facade, exposing long-held prejudices. The town of Iola was poignant to me as the attitudes and lives of those who lived there felt sickeningly familiar. In the book, Iola ends up submerged as part of the Blue Mesa Reservoir project, the town sitting at the bottom of the dam. The author, Shelley Read, was inspired by the real story of the Blue Mesa Reservoir – the real Iola, like the one in the book, was bought by the government to make way for the reservoir and ended up underwater at the bottom of the dam. In 2018, the town was revealed when a drought in Colorado meant the water level in the reservoir dropped low enough for it to be seen. There is a poetic parallel between the long-submerged town of Iola rearing its head again and the ideas the abandoned town represents that have become salient in American politics.
The Blue Mesa dam project reminds us that we feel we have control over the world around us, even the rugged natural world we live in, with our ability to control the flow of rivers, build highways and flatten farmland. However, although there are many who would like to forget and create a new version of America’s history, like the changes to the real American landscape, these histories are never quite gone forever, seeping forward into the present day. While Go As A River is fiction, the central events of the story are tragic because they truly did happen.
I loved Go As A River. Its insight into people and the way history twists and turns and ends up molding individual lives, as well as the exquisite descriptions of Victoria’s internal life and feelings, made for a beautiful read. The author, Shelley Read, was a creative writing lecturer for many years before writing this, her debut novel, and you can tell that she has honed her craft. The writing is considered, thoughtful, and will stay with you for a long time afterwards.